[whack]

iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and iPhone 6s were the three most popular smartphones in the US at the beginning of the holiday period, for a combined 31.3% share. The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge were the fourth and fifth best-selling phones in the US, with Samsung capturing 28.9% of smartphone sales.

I remember the days when Apple completely dominated the smartphone market, competing favorably with Android, and eclipsing any single Android manufacturer. I was surprised to hear that Apple has now dropped to 31% market share. This means that Android now has almost double the market share of Apple, and Samsung alone is going head-to-head with Apple.

I think we've just witnessed the end of Apple's golden era.

[astrodust]

Apple never achieve a dominant market share position, but they have always maintained a dominant profit share position.

We haven't witnessed the end of Apple's golden era, we've witnessed the end of the smart-phone adoption curve. Everyone who has ever wanted a smart phone has got one. Or two. Or probably three or four by now. They're buying fewer phones because the differences from one generation to the next are more incremental.

If there's a fundamental shift in how phones are used that demands a new kind of hardware or some kind of vastly more powerful software there will be an impetus to upgrade again. Until then it's more steady-state.

There's still tons of opportunity to innovate in the watch space, and the tablet market, while having cooled off, might continue to nibble away at notebook sales.

We're in a bit of a lull technology wise. Consoles, phones, laptops, they're all "good enough" for now.

[on_and_off]

I don't think Apple ever had an impressive marketshare.

Maybe at the very beginning and even at that time, Blackberry and Windows had a strong presence.

Android very quickly grew into an unstoppable force market share wise.

Apple can't compete on this metric. There are just too many variants of Android phones at all price points.

They do reap most of the profit of the industry though, which is unfortunate for everybody that is not Apple, including consumers.

OEMs are trapped in the same low margin point than pc makers have been for a while.

Google might be able to compete if they can focus for more than 2 minutes.

[YooLi]

When did Apple have dominating market share? Though they have near total profit market share, isn't their non-dominant market share what has kept them clear of any anti-trust scrutiny?

[lazylizard]

When did Apple have dominating market share? - maybe back in the days of the iphone 3g, in usa?